My long awaited upgrade(s)

Alright, here it is, finally time for me to ditch this artifacting Abit AI7 motherboard....stupid i865 POS.

Alright, now that I've cooled down a bit I can let you guys know what's going on here, and what I've finally settled on.

There are a few things happening with my computer in the next couple weeks, and I'll outline them all here, because I'm looking for any constructive critisicm or comments you might have.

Tonight after work I'm going to be placing an order for the beautiful DFI Lanparty Pro875B motherboard. Here is a nice review of the motherboard, just in case you're not familiar with the box contents and functionality of the BIOS.

Why I'm so excited about this board is that with a max vcore of 1.975v and a max vdimm of 2.9v right out of the box.....I'll finally be able to find the limits of my 2.8C m0. I've had boards before with that kind of voltage range, but there was always some little thing slowing down the progress.....something flaky or questionable about the board. The good news is that really, the only voltmods I can find for the board are to enhance its capabilities.....not FIX anything...which is VERY nice to see.

The next few upgrades may be happening in varying orders...depending on how the cash situation is doing and what my current priorities are. I'd say that within 1 month from now I WILL have everything on the below list:

1) OCZ DDR Booster - The reason for the DDR booster is that I know how well my memory can do in terms of clock speed with 2.9v.....but the DDR booster will allow me to bump the voltage to 3.1v and get some nicer timings out of my ram.....at whatever clock speed i end up getting it up to.

2) CoolerMaster Hyper6 - The reason for the Hyper6 is obvious.....its the biggest and baddest s478 cooler on the market....and it'd look damn cool installed in my Lian-Li. With the new motherboard I'll finally be able to find the ceiling on my CPU (for air cooling anyways)......and I AM going to be wanting more cooling then what that Zalman gives me for temps at high clock speed loads.

3) The NVSilencer 5 is actually my main priority following the motherboard for a few reasons. It will both lower my 6800GT temps, hopefully resulting in a better OC (see sig for current OC) and it will take down my case temps a bit by exhausting that hot air straight out of the case.

4) Last but not least, I still want to install 2 12" UV Cold Cathodes in my case.....one at the bottom of the case against the side panel, and the second behind the metal plate at the top of my Lian-Li. I've got blue lighting in my case ATM, and even though the glowing orange UV connections on the Lanparty board might clash, I think it might look kind of cool....it'll definitely stand out.

Other then the motherboard (which I am ordering tonight....yay ) the other 4 things may happen in certain combinations. Every online canadian store I've found that carries the NVSilencer is out of stock and would not be able to get it to me before the 17th.....when I'm going to a local LAN party. I am trying to get a local store to special order me an NVSilencer as a last resort. If they cannot get it in for me then I'm going to pick up the DDR Booster instead. However, if they CAN get the NVSilencer in for me then I'll get that, along with the two UV cathodes. Whatever I don't end up picking up will be purchased just after the LAN....so I will end up with everything above installed, just not all of them in the next 9 days....due to cash restraints.

If anyone has any comments or suggestions I'm open to hear 'em.....but I am very set on the board, so don't try and "turn me away" at all.

I'm not sure if I'll have my camera (which I lent to someone) by the time the board comes in, but If I do I'll be sure to get pics taken for ya. What I find interesting is that the connections/headers and such on the Lanparty board are almost in the same places as on my AI7 mobo. The fan headers are all basically in the same spots.....along with the IDE connections, so wiring will be a synch.

I look forward to hearing from ya.....oh.....and I'll be sure to keep you guys updated on my overclocks that come as a result of finally having a stable and capable motherboard to push my cpu and memory to their limits.

Just out of curiosity, why are you calling the AI7 crap? I replaced my IC7 with it and couldn't be happier. My overclocks are higher when I push the system, and my stock speed benchmark scores are slightly higher. I just find it very amusing your calling one of the best P4 boards on the market crap, and then your turning around and buying one of almost the same identical chipset.

djnes said:

Just out of curiosity, why are you calling the AI7 crap? I replaced my IC7 with it and couldn't be happier. My overclocks are higher when I push the system, and my stock speed benchmark scores are slightly higher. I just find it very amusing your calling one of the best P4 boards on the market crap, and then your turning around and buying one of almost the same identical chipset.

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Well, let me start off by saying that not all AI7's are equal and share the same problems....yours most likely does not share in the symptoms mine does. To start with, I have been fighting with this boards inability to overclock for some time now....but my SPECIFIC board (not that AI7 in general) will NOT run with any kind of stability at anything higher then 245FSB....no matter what voltage(s) or dram ratios I use. Secondly, my AI7 is one of the unlucky few that suffers from artifacting. Basically what happens is that once I hit about 235 or 240FSB I get artifacts in games and benchmarks that very closely resemble artifacts you would normally see from your video cards memory being clocked to high. This is a well known problem, and some people have actually been able to remedy or get around it....I just haven't been so lucky. I have tried EVERY single fix or solution present ANYwhere on the net to no avail.....I just can't get around these artifacts. Because (no matter what I do/try) I'm stuck with these artifacts I have kind of been forced to run my system at stock clock for the last month or two, because the artifacts DO show up in games, ruining the experience completey.

I am not bashing ALL AI7 boards however, because I have seen QUITE a few of them hit very high FSB's with no artifacting issues what-so-ever.....mine just isn't one of them.

Finally, the DFI isn't even based on the same chipset as the AI7, its out of the box performance is higher, it doesn't have any stupid "hit and miss" issues with votlages or artifacting, and gives me plenty of room to work with my overclock.

I actually originally bought the AI7 because I was not willing to do the droop mod to my P4C800-E and the voltage flux on that board was holding my cpu back a LOT. I went for the AI7 knowing that it had been claimed to be a very nice overclocker, and I purchased it in faith. I have since been stuck sitting with this board that not only cant overclock very well...but artifacts when I do try to push it at all.

I'm happy to hear that your AI7 is going great, and I acknowledge that it is still a great board....I just got stuck with a dud....and it's time to get rid of the thing.

Just so you know, your DFI board is the 875 chipset which is nearly identical to the 865 of your AI7. You would be wrong to assume your out-of-the-box performance is higher, because it's not. Both of those chipsets have been tested and proven to be almost identical.

nice upgrade

just make sure to put as5 or better on the nv silencer, the crap they send with it runs the card about 8c hotter than as5 will

just curious will the ocz booster work just as well with other brands of memory? like my corsair for example.

Just so you know, your DFI board is the 875 chipset which is nearly identical to the 865 of your AI7. You would be wrong to assume your out-of-the-box performance is higher, because it's not. Both of those chipsets have been tested and proven to be almost identical.

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Well let me just say that you're REALLY talking to the wrong person if you think you need to "let me know" about my chipsets guy.....I mean really.

I'm not so wrong to assume anything of the sorts after using an Asus P4C800-E DLX and then switching to the AI7. Running everything 100% stock and "out of the box" the two boards weren't even close. I lost quite a bit of memory bandwidth moving to the AI7, which in turn actually dropped my Aquamark3 by about 1,200 points. Again, this was stock out of the box performance, so its completely comparable and fair to say this, because EVERYTHING except the mobo's was the same.

I know that in general the performance gap between the i865 and i875 chipsets is very thin....but for the most part it DOES still exist.....and some ppl encounter this more then others. I'll be happy to finally move back to a Canterwood board....mainly just to regain that out of the box performance that I lost when I moved to the AI7 in the first place.

You can say all you want about how I might have done something differnet or wrong....but I didnt.....the performance difference just WAS that great....and I'm glad to be finally leaving the AI7.

just make sure to put as5 or better on the nv silencer

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No worries there.....I've always got a full tube handy.

just curious will the ocz booster work just as well with other brands of memory? like my corsair for example.

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From what I've seen its not what ram you've got, but what motherboard you've got when it comes to how high you might be able to take the vdimm. Of course some memory will naturally like voltage more then another.....but it really ends up coming down to your board. Check out OCZ's Motherboard compatibility list to see how you sit with your board.

cornelious0_0 said:

Alright, here it is, finally time for me to ditch this artifacting Abit AI7 motherboard....stupid i865 POS.

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whatcha gonna do with that board?... sell?

wayne said:

whatcha gonna do with that board?... sell?

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It's already sold actually.....I'm shipping it out this weekend, and I'll have the DFI early next week.

I'll be sure to have a thread up with all my new results...as I can hardly wait to see where I'll FINALLY be able to take my 2.8C too. First I had the P4C800 with the worst votlage fluctuation I've ever seen on the cpu.....making it VERY hard to maintain any kind of stability at anything higher then 3.5GHz.....then I go to the artifacting AI7 that won't clear 245FSB at all with any kind of stability....and now......to the DFI.....and I couldn't be happier. As I've said before, because the P4C800 crapped out under load (when the voltage dropped) I was still actually able to boot into windows at 3.75GHz, and it was merely the voltage drop from loading the startup apps (bumping the CPU to about 50% load) that caused it to lock up.

Cross your fingers for me....it'll be interesting to see what I'll be able to pull off with this new combo.